Why We Crave ‘Comfort Food’
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
Debbie Koenig explores the science behind why we reach for specific foods during stress, drawing on research from psychologists, sociologists, and flavor scientists. The term “comfort food,” coined by psychologist Joyce Brothers in 1966, originally described homemade foods tied to childhood security — but decades of food manufacturing have produced ultraprocessed versions that are more calorie-dense, more bingeable, and more likely to hijack the brain’s reward system. Research by UCLA’s A. Janet Tomiyama found that nearly 43 percent of comfort foods self-identified by Americans are ultraprocessed. Scientists now understand that comfort food’s power is overwhelmingly psychological, rooted in nostalgia, cultural conditioning, and early childhood associations with safety and love.
Studies by University of Pittsburgh sociologist Nick Rogers and social psychologist Chelsea Reid of the College of Charleston confirm that comfort food’s soothing effect comes not from its nutritional content but from the memories it activates. Remarkably, Reid’s experiments showed that participants experienced emotional benefits simply by visualizing comfort food — without eating anything at all. Tomiyama’s research goes further: after a stress-inducing speech, participants’ moods recovered equally whether they ate ultraprocessed food, fresh fruit, or nothing. This points toward a liberating conclusion — the brain can be reconditioned to find comfort in healthier foods, or even in non-food sources entirely.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Comfort Is Rooted in Childhood
Nearly all participants in a 2025 University of Pittsburgh study described emotional attachment to dishes from childhood — specific comfort foods are shaped by culture and early family experiences.
Nearly Half of Comfort Foods Are Ultraprocessed
In a UCLA study of 1,760 self-identified comfort eaters, 42.7 percent of the 300 listed comfort foods were ultraprocessed — engineered for shelf life, palatability, and overconsumption.
Ultraprocessed Foods Are Engineered to Overeat
Processing strips away food’s natural structure, enabling consumption of up to twice as many calories per minute compared to unprocessed alternatives — and leaving eaters feeling hungrier afterward.
Nostalgia Drives Comfort, Not Calories
Chelsea Reid’s 2025 experiments showed participants felt comforted simply by visualizing comfort foods — without eating. The psychological connection to memory and social bonds is the active ingredient.
The Mood Boost Would Happen Anyway
Tomiyama’s stress experiment found mood recovered equally whether participants ate ultraprocessed food, fresh fruit, or nothing — suggesting we credit comfort food for natural emotional recovery.
The Brain Can Be Reconditioned
In a Pavlovian experiment, Tomiyama’s team successfully conditioned participants to associate relaxation with fruit — demonstrating that healthier foods can be trained to provide genuine emotional comfort.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Comfort Food’s Power Is Psychological, Not Caloric
The article’s central argument is that comfort food works through memory and emotional conditioning — not through its nutritional content. Because the effect is largely psychological, it opens the door to healthier substitutes: the brain can be retrained to find the same comfort in nutritious foods, or even in non-food experiences like visualization and relaxation techniques.
Purpose
To Inform and Offer Practical Scientific Hope
Koenig writes to translate current research on comfort eating into accessible insights for a general audience. Her purpose is not merely to describe why comfort food works, but to offer genuinely hopeful findings — that understanding the psychological roots of food cravings opens realistic pathways to healthier habits without deprivation. The article is informative but also implicitly empowering.
Structure
Personal Hook → Problem → Research Evidence → Solution
The article opens with the author’s own comfort food story to build relatability, then establishes the problem (ultraprocessed foods now dominate comfort eating). It moves through layered research — from childhood conditioning and nostalgia studies to Pavlovian reconditioning experiments — building toward a hopeful conclusion. The structure mirrors a classic science journalism arc: identify a familiar behavior, reveal its hidden mechanisms, then point toward intervention.
Tone
Warm, Curious & Scientifically Grounded
Koenig strikes a warm, conversational tone from the opening personal anecdote through to her playful closing line about sketching cookies and cream instead of eating them. She never lectures or moralizes about unhealthy eating; instead she maintains genuine curiosity and lets the research speak. The tone is approachable without being superficial — scientific findings are presented accurately and with appropriate nuance.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
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Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
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Easily consumed in large, excessive quantities; designed or experienced in a way that makes it difficult to stop — here used to describe how ultraprocessed foods are engineered to encourage overconsumption.
“…these ultraprocessed foods make today’s comfort foods more bingeable and less healthy than those of previous generations.”
Food additives that maintain the texture, consistency, and structure of processed foods during production, transport, and storage — not found in home kitchens but common in ultraprocessed products.
“They often include stabilizers, flavor enhancers and other substances you wouldn’t use in your home kitchen.”
To retrain psychological associations through new repeated experiences; in the article, used to describe deliberately building new emotional links between healthy foods and feelings of relaxation or comfort.
“Scientists have also explored whether we can recondition our brains to connect comfort with healthy…”
Relating to Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiments, in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an automatic response through repeated pairing — here, linking fruit with relaxation through daily repetition.
“The Pavlovian connection worked, Tomiyama says — participants reported a greater decrease in negative emotions…”
Excessive consumption of something pleasurable beyond what is healthy or advisable; used to indicate that ultraprocessed foods pose health risks that go beyond simply eating too much of them.
“Scientists have evidence that ultraprocessed foods pose risks beyond mere overindulgence.”
Having the quality of restoring health, strength, or well-being; used in the article to describe nutritious cultural comfort foods like ajiaco — a Colombian chicken, potato and corn soup — that are genuinely nourishing.
“In Colombia, I might have been raised on ajiaco, a restorative soup of chicken, potato and corn.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1According to the article, participants in Chelsea Reid’s experiments experienced emotional comfort from comfort foods even when they only visualized eating them, without consuming anything.
2According to the 2024 study described in the article, what was the key difference between participants who ate ultraprocessed versus minimally processed breakfast sandwiches, given that both meals were matched for calories and macronutrients?
3Which sentence best explains why ultraprocessed foods have become intertwined with childhood comfort food memories, even though they are a relatively recent invention?
4Evaluate the following three statements based on the article’s content:
The article argues that comfort food preferences are universal and consistent across cultures, with high-calorie, high-fat foods being most comforting to people worldwide.
In Tomiyama’s stress experiment, participants who ate no food at all still experienced mood recovery comparable to those who ate ultraprocessed comfort foods.
The article presents Pavlovian conditioning as a promising method for retraining the brain to find comfort in healthier foods.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5Based on the article’s overall argument, what can most reasonably be inferred about a person who grew up eating homemade miso soup every Sunday with their grandparents and now craves it when stressed?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
The article explains that all mac and cheese is processed, since both macaroni and cheese are minimally processed ingredients — but ultraprocessed versions use the most highly refined forms and add stabilizers, flavor enhancers, and other industrial substances not found in home kitchens. These additives maximize shelf life and engineered palatability through precise salt, fat, and sugar combinations. The key distinction is industrial ingredients that extract components from whole foods rather than using the foods themselves.
Processing strips away the natural structure of food ingredients, creating a uniform texture that requires less chewing and allows food to go down more quickly. This faster consumption — up to twice as many calories per minute compared to unprocessed foods — bypasses the body’s normal satiety signaling, which depends partly on chewing time and texture. The 2024 sandwich study showed that even with identical calorie and macronutrient counts, participants who ate the ultraprocessed version reported feeling hungrier afterward.
The article takes a nuanced position: comfort food’s mood-boosting effects are real, but they are primarily psychological rather than caloric. The key finding from Tomiyama’s experiment is that mood recovered equally whether people ate comfort food, fresh fruit, or nothing — suggesting we attribute to the food a recovery that would have happened naturally. The comfort comes from the nostalgic associations activated by the food, not from the act of eating calorie-dense ingredients specifically. Visualizing the food, or simply allowing time to pass, may work just as well.
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This article is rated Intermediate. The language is accessible and conversational — Koenig uses personal anecdotes and everyday food examples to ground scientific concepts. However, readers must track multiple research studies across different disciplines (psychology, nutrition, sociology), synthesize findings that sometimes seem contradictory, and draw inferences about what the evidence collectively implies. The article rewards careful reading rather than skimming, making it excellent practice for science-based RC passages on competitive exams.
The article draws on four primary researchers: A. Janet Tomiyama, a psychological scientist at UCLA who studied comfort food prevalence and conducted the Pavlovian reconditioning and stress experiments; Nick Rogers, a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh who conducted qualitative interviews exploring why comfort food comforts; Chelsea Reid, a social psychologist at the College of Charleston who studied nostalgia, social connectedness, and the visualization effect; and John Munafo, a flavor scientist at the University of Tennessee who co-authored a review in the 2025 Annual Review of Food Science and Technology.
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